aly, and for the
repair of the ravages of anarchy and war, Theodoric was undoubtedly much
assisted by his ministers of Roman extraction, some of whom I shall
endeavour to portray in a later chapter. Still, though the details of
the work may have been theirs, it cannot be denied that the initiative
was his. A barbarian, thinking only barbarous thoughts, looking upon war
and the chase as the only employments worthy of a free man, would not
have chosen such counsellors, and, if he had found them in his service,
would not have kept them. Therefore, remembering those years of boyhood,
which he passed at Constantinople, at a time when the character is most
susceptible of strong and lasting impressions, I cannot doubt that
notwithstanding the frequent relapses into barbarism which marked his
early manhood, he was at heart a convert to civilisation, that his
desire was to obtain for "the Hesperian land" all that he had seen best
and greatest in the social condition of the city by the Bosphorus, and
that his Secretary truly expressed his deepest and inmost thoughts when
he made him speak of himself as one "whose whole care was to change
everything for the better".[78]

[Footnote 78: Nos quibus cordi est in melius cuncta mutare.--Cass.,
Var., ii., 21.]

I shall close this chapter with a few anecdotes--far too few have been
preserved to us--which serve to show what manner of man he appeared to
his contemporaries. Again I borrow from the anonymous author, the
supposed Bishop of Ravenna.

He was, we are told, unlettered,[79] though fond of the converse of
learned men, and so clumsy with his pen that after ten years of reigning
he was still unable to form without assistance the four letters (THEO)
which were affixed as his sign-manual to documents issued in his name.
In order to overcome this difficulty he had a golden plate prepared with
the necessary letters perforated in it, and drew his pen through the
holes.[80] But, though he was unlettered, his shrewdness and mother-wit
caused both his sayings and doings to be much noted and remembered by
his subjects. In one difficult case which came before him, he discovered
the truth by a sudden device which probably reminded the bystanders of
the Judgment of Solomon, A young man who as a child had been brought up
by a friend of his deceased father, returned to his home and claimed a
share of his inheritance from his mother. She, however, was on the point
of marriage with a second husban